China: Beijing launches anti-dumping investigation into cognac

Beijing declares war on imported liqueurs and the Chinese cognac syndrome affects all the main European spirits stocks: first of all the French Pernod Ricard and Remy Cointreau, but also Diageo and Davide Campari itself, which drops on Piazza Affari at the lowest levels of the last twelve months. China has announced that it is about to launch an anti-dumping investigation into liqueur products such as brandy and cognac from the European Union. The investigation, which Beijing says was triggered by a request from a national spirits association, particularly targets French producers and will focus on containers smaller than 200 liters (44 British gallons) coming from the European Union. However, the commercial exchange is of limited size for a country where the consumption of a local product such as Baiju is still dominant: in the first eleven months of last year China imported distilled grape wine liqueurs from the European Union for a value of 1.57 billion dollars. Compared to ...